Engineers built a tiny jumping water strider-like robot (+video)

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Robotics has always been the field where in the inventions has always taken individuals to greatest extents of admiration. So does these extremely small Chinese Robots, which can, not just run on water, but jump all over it as well.

The team behind the small Robots is a bunch of engineers from Harvard University and Korea’s Seoul National University has finally achieved the literally unthinkable. The tiny robots can stay afloat on a water surface as well as move on it by jumping, while all the other robots will sink deep in the efforts.

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The tiny Chinese robots have been built to mimic the movements of the Water Strider, an insect that can stay afloat on a water body for long and can move around by striding on it. The engineers took the basic idea from the insects and added their brains to build in a feature that will allow the robots to jump on water.

According to the statement by Kyu Jin Cho, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Director of the Biorobotics Laboratory at Seoul National University, the water strider know the phenomenon of jumping on the water surface perfectly and thus, it is certainly obvious that the robot had to be build on the same principle. He also added that there are a lot of things to ensure before you can actually jump on water. You will be needed to get the pressure, the depth as well as the force adequate enough to take the leap.

Kyu Jin Cho said:

“Water’s surface needs to be pressed at the right speed for an adequate amount of time, up to a certain depth, in order to achieve jumping. The water strider is capable of doing all these things flawlessly.”

In fact, the timing factor is also of extreme importance as without it, things will not work out. In case of the robot, it exerts a pressure that is 16 times of its own on the water in order to jump, without actually breaking in through.

The research was funded by South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration. We will have to wait and see as to where the robots will be used!

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